According to Cisco’s VP of Corporate Business Development, Hilton Romanski, global IP traffic is projected to increase threefold in the next five years. For this reason, the networking giant had its eye on BroadHop, a policy control and service management technology for carrier networks that has been around since 2003. BroadHop is deployed by more than 70 wireline and mobile carriers around the world.

BroadHop has an open policy platform, which is designed to make it easier for service providers to control and monetize any service, regardless of whether the network has new or legacy components. In a nutshell, the technology allows a carrier to develop service tiers based on bandwidth or application.

According to Romanski, the technology will benefit Cisco’s service providers, as users will be incentivized to purchase “customized premium service packages,” such as on-demand streaming.

The BroadHop team will report to Shailesh Shukla, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s software and applications group.

The networking giant acquired three companies last month — most recently, Cariden for $141 million in cash. In an interview with VentureBeat, Cisco’s cloud computing CTO Lew Tucker stressed that the company is always on the look-out for potential acquisition opportunities to bring innovation to its suite of products.

Networking and infrastructure giant Cisco Systems is showing no signs of slowing down. It just acquired its third company this month.

Cisco will pay approximately $141 million in cash for California-based company Cariden, a network traffic-management software maker. Cariden’s suite of products will augment Cisco’s offering to service providers.

Lew Tucker, Cisco’s CTO of cloud computing said Cisco is constantly on the lookout for M&A opportunities to boost its software suite. These three deals have been months — if not years — in the making, and happened to close at almost the same time. Cisco recently closed a deal to buy Meraki, a Bay Area startup that provides cloud controlled wireless networks for medium-sized businesses, and followed up with a $125 million deal for Cloupia.

The Cariden deal is expected to be completed in the second quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2013.

The Cariden acquisition reinforces Cisco’s commitment to offering service providers the technologies they need to optimize and monetize their networks, and ultimately grow their businesses,” Surya Panditi, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s service provider networking group, said in a statement.

“Given the widespread convergence of IP and optical networks, Cariden’s technology will help carriers more efficiently manage bandwidth, network traffic, and intelligence. This acquisition signals the next phase in Cisco’s packet and optical convergence strategy and further strengthens our ability to lead this market transition in networking,” he continued.

Cariden was founded in 2001, and its major customers include Verizon and Swisscom.